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Color Laser Printers Tracking Everything You Print
It's not new, but it's getting noticed: Jordan writes "Yahoo! News is reporting that several printer manufacturers are now and have been for some time embedding (nearly) invisible serial numbers in every document you print with their color laser printers, allowing law enforcement to track any such document back to the printer which printed it. The technology, ostensibly created to track down money counterfeiters, was created by Xerox about 20 years ago. A Xerox researcher says that the number-embedding chip lies 'way in the machine, right near the laser' and that 'standard mischief won't get you around it.'"
This is why I always print my ransom letters using an old daisy wheel printer.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Get dazzling colors, the blackest blacks, and the highest resolution from your new HP Ashcroft.
LilMikey.com... I'll stop doing it when you sto
What makes you think we still have such archaic things as privacy laws anymore? Dont you know that if you have a private life the terrorists win?
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
And as we all know very well, CSI has a machine that will read the code and bring up a 3d map with your current location, a recent photo of you, and a list of every cash purchase you've made in the last six months.
The technology... was created by Xerox about 20 years ago.
It was 1984 twenty years ago.
...by printing tons of encoded, "dots", so when police read them, they will read, "All Your Base Are Belong to Us!"
The Geek revolution has begun.
IGB: More fun than eating oatmeal!
Does that include a Louisville Slugger?
Lesson learned, if you want to print hundreds of forged checks or counterfeit bills, pay for the printer in cash!
But not cash that you printed yourself on a printer that wasn't paid for with cash you didn't print yourself. Or something.
Oh, sorry. Wrong discussion.
Just disconnect the yellow. Who needs all three (or four in some cases) colors anyway?
Here's a worse one:
Did you know that every time you touch something, you leave an invisible mark that's unique to you and can be used to track where you've been?
It's a privacy nightmare.
I somehow think that applying whiteout isn't an acceptable way around the problem for the types of task that this technology is an issue!
:S
"Yeah, it's a hundred dollar bill!"
"What's with the massive amount of tippex on it?"
Well, looks like it's back to cutting out newspaper headlines to make my blackmail notes.
All your prints are belong to us
http://melbournephilosophy.com/
Hahah, that'll work.
"Hello Kinko's Employee. I'd like you to print 500 copies of this here One-hundred dollar bill. You can just keep one of them to cover the cost."
And if all the tape shows is the back of your head then they can pull out the special software that zooms in on the eyeball of the clerk making the sale to get your reflection!
Then they'll just run it through the special face recognition software!
You've been watching a little too much CSI.
Printers are cheap, every time you run out of ink, place old printer inside ion cannon* and turn it into a ball of molten obsidian.. and also never send in warrenty registration etc etc... and even though they can trace documents to a certain printer, since said printer is no longer identifiable.
*= if you don't Own an ion cannon yet, you can build one care of these DIY directions (a cyclotron is the key component to an ion cannon...)
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
The printer has a hidden GPS receiver (yes it works indoors even inside a cave, it's very sophisticated you know), every time you print something, the current location of the printer is also imprinted in yellow using a secret code impossible to detect by human eye. So, there you have it.
A Xerox researcher says that the number-embedding chip lies 'way in the machine, right near the laser...'
...just past this little doohicky, but to the right of the thingamuhwhachit, but if you get as far as the whatchamacallit you've passed it....
Darn engineers and their technical mumbo-jumbo....
"All great things are simple & expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." --Churchill
I guess I can eat a gun barrel now, I have seen everything.
WTF? Over?
I just hope they don't have to check my wang as evidence.
So print on black paper.
Wow, I guess in paralegal school they don't have any courses on sarcasm.
Sweet...
Now I just have to buy a printer at a yard sale and commit some heinous crime with it.
Later on...
"Yep, looks like he was murdered with this printer, but don't worry we will track it right back to the owner."
"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
FOR SALE - CHEAP
Almost new Xerox[tm] color printer.
Only $200,000, er, 2000 double-sided pages printed.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
"Paralegal school?" I'll thank you not to refer to Clown College in that way.
*honk honk*
'standard mischief won't get you around it.'
Now that every hacker on the internet knows about it that chip has a life expectancy of . . . maybe friday.
Only in a Slashdot fantasy can a Slackware install turn into several hours of sex . . . . .
Don't forget the bleached hair, cosmetic surgery, and sex change!
Ok... how's this look?
1). Make your money in your favorite photo editing software.
2.) Take it to CompUSA/MicroCenter/Frys on a USB Thumb Drive.
3.) Pop the thumb drive into one of those new printers with the ability to print from there.
4.) Print Cash in one of their demo printers.
5.) Use Cash to buy printer.
6.) Return Printer.
7.) Get Real Cash.
8.) Profit.
Seems complex, but... I have to run... I'm off to CompUSA.
Bill
It's my Sig and you can't have it. Mine! All Mine!
Bah! You still rely on a piece of potentially traceable technology... with my hate letters (give me money or else ____), I make it a point to cut my letters from various magazines with a straight razor and then glue them to the intended paper (which often too is another magazine page), all while wearing gloves.
Of course... I would have gotten away with it all too if it wasn't for those pesky kids... and the tracking chips in the glue.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
Disable the alarm system, break in at night. Be sure to replace all used ink cartridges and paper. Then steal something stupid, like a stack of AOL discs. The police and employees will forget about it (no one will pursue a criminal who steals AOL discs, Kinkos has a dozen more boxes and the police don't like being laughed at).
Wait several months, then start buying stuff. But under no circumstances should you live above your means. The IRS, unlike the police, do not assume innocence, and are pure evil.
I am John Hurt.
Technology like this is what forces American criminal organizations to outsource their counterfeting and ransom operations overseas. You're putting American criminals out of work!
Ive never had a problem. When I need to make first contact with my associates in the form of anonymous letters, I usually use cut out pieces of lettering from recent newspapers and magazines then haphazardly glue them onto copier paper with egg white or floured water.
I think most old school kidnappers use the same technique.
the younger ones obviously use email.
------
beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his mind he dreams himself your master
It would not suprise me if most of the stuff you drag home marks its territory too, including ink jets.
I do not use my ink jet often but when I do, the ink is always dried, has bands and looks like crap. If these tracking ink dots came out fine and traceable, I'd be pissed.
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
I was browsing porn with IE and I recieved a Windows dialog warning that stated:
"Your printer may be secretly printing a hidden serial number. Click here to remove it." So I did. I am safe now. Lucky thing my IP address was not being transmitted.
Actually in keeping with the theme, everything has, in fact, seen you
... or that it just might give the FBI 10-20 times more clues on where to find the used printers.
Privacy is terrorism.
Wonderful claim to fame you've got there. hahahah.
If you took a water pistol and sprayed water into the bill slot, it'd short out the electronics of it, and you could push buttons all day to get free drinks. I saw it done a few times. :)
Could this be taken as armed robbery?
We would get Regular visits from the SS
Could you please explain why the Schutz Staffel would pay you visits at all? I thought I shot them all down in Castle Wolfenstein years ago.> police (I give them money every year)
;-)
Ouch!
Hopefuly you favor cash so there's no need to worry - unless you use a laser printer to print their names and amounts on the evenlope!
Everything will be fine once the chips are implanted directly into all our brains.
-------- In Soviet Russia, "Soviet Russia" sigs hate Slashdot.